Harry de Quetteville has a timely epiphany as the clock edges towards midnight
on New Year's Eve

How lovely it is to be middle aged. There’s no more pressure to look cool. No more pressure to inhale. No more pressure to have a girlfriend. In fact, once you are married, there are even bonus points for NOT having a girlfriend. It’s wonderful. And never more so than on New Year’s Eve.

In adolescence, New Year’s Eve parties are the social equivalent of standing in a line waiting to be picked for a playground football match. Others have their names called, and slip away smiling into the backslapping embrace of their team-mates. They are cool. You stand shivering against the wall, wondering why on earth you have volunteered for this bizarre form of auto-humiliation. Eventually the names are no longer called out, and with spectacular surliness you celebrate New Year with your parents.

Over the years the fear and loathing of New Year’s Eve parties melds into something more agreeable. Instead of sitting next to a drying patch of sick on a carpeted staircase drinking rum and flat coke from a plastic cup while watching the only girl in the room snog some Neanderthal who started shaving aged 9, you enjoy increasingly good booze and sometimes even talk to the opposite sex yourself.

By your late-20s, it’s conceivable that the evening even involves some food, as opposed to non-stop drinking followed by an emergency burger. And by your early-30s, supper might be followed by the stereo blasting out the same 80s soundtrack from plastic rum-and-coke days. Except that this time, instead of dreaming wallflower dreams of smashing in the Neanderthal’s nose, which is the only thing keeping his eyes apart, and stealing his girl, you actually dance and enjoy yourself. Bliss.

So this year everything seemed set up for the perfect evening. There was lots of good food, and lots of good booze, and a small group of chums. Best of all, we weren’t even going to have to leave the house, because everyone was coming to our place. The anticipation of getting tarted up for a long evening out was replaced by the far sweeter thrill of getting tarted up to stay in.

It wasn’t the booze. There was plenty of that, and uncorked bottles were waiting within arm’s reach. It wasn’t the food. Delicious as ever and more on the way. It wasn’t the conversation, which was jolly.

It was just that I was falling asleep.

Blinking myself awake, I looked around the table. It was then that I realised that no one had been up this late for months. Tiny children had drained all of the will to dance the night away to “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”. And possibly “The Reflex”.

And as we entered the final bend of the slow, creeping marathon towards midnight, I understood that there is a sweet spot for New Year’s Eve parties. It is possible that we may find it again. Maybe in about 18 years time. But this year, what has no doubt been obvious to everyone else for ages, is finally clear to me. I am past it.